The Life of Thomas Hardy
were beginning to estimate the ancient pomp and circumstance of the military spirit at its true value:
Wherefore at times, as if in ancient mould
He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;
But never hath he seemed the old!
The lurid Deity of heretofore
Succumbs to one of saner nod;
The Battle-god is god no more.
Unfortunately, this note of melioristic optimism was proved to be based on fallacious foundations by the events that followed. It was, perhaps, the general feeling after a second-rate war, but it is a feeling that seems to wear off with extreme rapidity under the stress of the clash of dynasties. Hardy here unconsciously—and therefore, perhaps, most effectively—illustrated the irony of circumstance. The author of Men Who March Away must have realized what a scurvy trick Time had played upon him in making a "laughingstock" of The Sick God.
In the year before the outbreak of the Great War Hardy wrote the poem called His Country, expressing his transcendental view of the idea of patriotism. The synopses of all the stanzas running through marginal notes read as follows: "He travels southward and looks around; and cannot discover the boundary of his native country; or where his duties to his fellow-creatures end; nor where are his enemies." The last stanza reads:
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